Study Examines Use Of Massachusetts Community Health Centers, JAMA Commentary Discusses Hospital Safety

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 26 Mar 2009 - 7:00 PDT

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"How Is The Primary Care Safety Net Faring in Massachusetts? Community Health Centers In The Midst of Health Reform," Kaiser Family Foundation's Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured: The study conducted by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services found that the 34 federally-qualified community health centers in Massachusetts served 482,503 patients in 2007, up more than 51,000 patients from two years before. In addition, the study found that the number of uninsured patients using the centers declined, illustrating the state's successful effort to improve coverage by expanding public programs and making private insurance more affordable. However, according to the study, the centers continued to see substantial numbers of uninsured residents. In addition to the study, KCMU also issued a new fact sheet on community health centers and an updated issue brief on community health centers and their role in providing comprehensive primary care to more than 16 million patients nationwide (Kaiser Family Foundation release, 3/24).

"Measuring Preventable Harm: Helping Science Keep Pace With Policy," Journal of the American Medical Association: In the commentary -- Peter Pronovost of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and Department of Surgery, and the JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Elizabeth Colantuoni of the Bloomberg School's Department of Biostatistics -- write that the main barrier to improving the ability to measure safety outcomes at hospitals "has been a poor investment in the basic science of patient safety," as well as not creating separate distinctions for preventable harm and inevitable harm. To address these large-scale problems, the government should "develop scalable measures of preventable harm"; make the "tradeoffs ... between accuracy and costs" transparent; and separate "hospital efforts that prevent harm from policy efforts that judge performance," Pronovost and Colantuoni write. They add, "Once health care can accurately estimate the extent to which harm is preventable, policy makers can and should align payment policy" (Pronovost/Colantuoni, JAMA, 3/25).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

© 2009 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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